


but not as we know it

by spikeface



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Mirror Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 18:21:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spikeface/pseuds/spikeface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two months after the USS Enterprise crashes and burns, McCoy wakes up on the ISS Enterprise and tries to find his way home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [But Not As We Know It 所知不同](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1394959) by [racifer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/racifer/pseuds/racifer)



> This fic was originally posted as a response to [this prompt](http://community.livejournal.com/issenterprise/2144.html?thread=7776#t7776). Thanks to green-postit and mardia for their endless patience and support.

**I don't need a doctor, dammit, I am a doctor.**

Two months, three days, and four hours after the Enterprise plummeted out of the sky and killed its crew, McCoy came to the conclusion that he was drunk and crazy. 

The drunk was obvious after the amount of bourbon he'd had. In another life he'd pitch a fit about anyone gulping down good liquor the way he was, but that had been when his access to alcohol was restricted to whatever Scotty could drum up in the bulkhead of the computer bay. Now he had all the time in the world to enjoy bourbon, and he'd never have to choke down Scotty's horse piss again. 

He sprawled in a chair in his hotel room and wondered how much he'd have to down before that fact didn't hurt so much. 

As for the crazy part, Jim's grinning ghost had that covered. 

Resting the chilled glass against his temple, he tried to remember when it had started. Things had been a blur since he'd been beamed down to this godforsaken planet a week before the crash, when the biggest problem had been the virus. It hurt to think about Jim's worried face when McCoy had left, all the reassurances McCoy had been forced to give that he'd be _fine_ , that he wouldn't let himself get infected, that it was his duty as a doctor to go. 

McCoy toasted the irony, how much fuss there had been when he'd gone planetside while the real danger had been lurking in the skies. 

He hadn't been seeing Jim's ghost then, obviously, just Jim himself, asking how the cure was going, when the quarantine would end, whether he should send someone else down. McCoy remembered bellowing at Jim not to let anyone else risk it, all his good intentions just paving the road. There wasn't enough bourbon in the universe to make that hurt less. 

And then the attack. 

Four hundred and seventy four lives ended in one screaming instant, five more wheezed out in the ER hours later. It was no great number in the scheme of things, not compared to Vulcan, not even compared to Tarsus IV. McCoy hadn't even seen it, so wrapped up in his lab that the Enterprise had been a field of scrap metal and screaming before he had even been told what was happening. There had been nothing for him to do but ID the bodies they'd found that had been anything close to recognizable. 

The charred rictus on Jim's face had been a parody of the grin that had always made McCoy ache. 

That meant it couldn't be Jim he kept seeing. Not _his_ Jim—the Jim he'd always wished was his. It was the delusion of a brain succumbing to grief and exhaustion and the beginnings of despair. McCoy was surprised, since no one in his family had shown any tendency towards delusion, but the evidence had been following him for long enough. 

Three days, he figured. The first just a flash of a face he would know anywhere, blue eyes blinking out from the fog that settled nightly over Argelius II. He hadn't slept for two nights after discovering the Argelian's ancient punishment for murderers, and it had been easy to blame Jim's appearance on exhaustion. 

But even after he had collapsed for a full day he'd still been seeing things, seeing _Jim_. It had been four times now, the last when Jim had followed him down the street for a whole block before disappearing. 

The comm shrilled at him, and McCoy staggered over to answer it until he saw it was the ex. He never thought he'd miss her cold silence, but the pitying look in her eyes whenever she tried to talk to him was light-years worse. He let her leave a message he could delete later and turned back to his drink. 

A drink now held by one James Tiberius Kirk. 

Jim swirled it, the ice rattling against the sides, looking at McCoy with an unfamiliar expression. His command gold had been traded in for a vest, all tacky shine and bared arms. There was also a knife strapped to his hip, and that was definitely out of place, but then he opened his mouth and it was pure Jim: "You look like shit." 

It was the first time he'd heard Jim's voice since he died. He refused to watch the newsreels, and his dreams were filled with screaming. He shouldn't be encouraging this fantasy, he _knew_ that, but there was no one here to tell him not to and he was too drunk and dead on his feet to care and it was _Jim_. 

"You haunting me just to keep bitching?" 

Jim's face lit up and McCoy had to sit down. He collapsed into his seat and stared up into that smile and nearly choked on his need to reach out and touch. This was just a hallucination, something he should be worried about, but he couldn't bring himself to break it. Peaking over the numbing shield of alcohol he remembered the times Jim had smiled like this, when he knew a secret or had gotten laid, wanted to tell McCoy all about it. He'd been a damn kid every time, so excited until McCoy couldn't take it anymore. 

Had he ever apologized for that punch? 

"That's the McCoy I know," Jim said, and handed him his drink. McCoy didn't want to think how something that couldn't be real was holding a glass. He gulped down more bourbon. Jim wasn't real, because he was dead. McCoy hadn't been able to save him. Hadn't even been able to die with him. 

He still could, of course, he thought in the bleak silence that followed. It might even be fitting, his useless hands turning on him. 

"Someone once told me that stuff should be sipped," Jim continued. 

"That's rich coming from you, Captain Moderation." Maybe this was a manifestation of his subconscious telling him to lay off the booze; talking sense to himself as his best friend's ghost was the kind of fucked up thing he would do. 

Jim's answering laugh rippled clear through him. 

There was another period of silence where Jim watched him and McCoy tried to man up and tell Jim to fuck off, to break the spell. He only managed to ask, "Why are you here, Jim?" 

Jim got that stupid look on his face from trying to frown and smile at the same time. "Isn't that interesting." 

"Fascinating, even," McCoy supplied automatically, watching Jim's eyes narrow in response and thinking about Spock and wondering how he could miss him as much as he did. With his luck the pointy-eared bastard would start following him around too. Maybe all of them, every man, woman and alien he hadn't been able to save. He deserved it. 

He'd had a question. It took him a moment to remember and when he did the words were suddenly difficult to get out. "Why are you here?" 

"I need a doctor." Jim clasped his hands behind his back. Strange to hear him all but asking; Jim couldn't even admit he needed a bandage when he was bleeding out on the floor. 

McCoy was drunk enough that it felt fitting to be at the beck and call of ghosts. He had no other responsibilities: the plague was cured, he had indefinite medical leave and his whole job, his whole _life_ , was now a hunk of scrap metal and dust. 

And hell, he'd accepted a long time ago that there was nothing he could deny Jim Kirk. He gestured wide, sloppy from the booze. "I'm right here." 

Jim blinked. "Good." He nodded, as if coming to a decision. "That's good." 

Then he slammed his fist into McCoy's temple.


	2. Chapter 2

**I may throw up on you.**

McCoy woke to the double headache of too much drinking and having been punched in the goddamn head, and on top of that the unsettling certainty that his atoms had been scattered recently. Scotty insisted–used to insist–that there was no way to tell, but McCoy could always feel it.

He pried his eyes open, wanting the dream to end. He was hungover enough to still be drunk—probably slipped on something and cracked his head that way, maybe just delusional from grief. It must have been getting worse: when the room came into focus he was lying in Jim's quarters, on Jim's _bed_. The light was slicing right through his eyes and his head was stuffed with angry Klingons, but he forced himself to concentrate. Jim was standing near the door, staring at Spock. Spock was staring at McCoy.

"I thought I told you to take the conn," Jim was telling Spock, voice flattened by McCoy's hangover.

"Yes, Captain," Spock replied placidly, never looking away from McCoy. Jim followed his gaze, smirking as he saw that McCoy was awake. 

McCoy listened to the hum of the ship around them, his lullaby for years, and watched Spock and Jim watch him. They looked exactly the way he remembered, preserved perfectly in his memories except for the few irrational oddities dreams always added—the shine of the sashes at the hems of their shirts, the leanness in their bodies, the beard on Spock's face.

He was going to wake up soon. He couldn't think of any fate more terrible.

"Nice of you to stop by, Spock," Jim drawled as he walked to McCoy's bed. His eyes were shining. "Be seeing you."

Spock left before McCoy could force himself to speak or move. It took all of his energy to focus on Jim, standing at his bedside. He ordered the lamp by his bed to shine right into his fucking eyes and then had the nerve to look pleased with himself. "Morning, sunshine."

McCoy rolled over and vomited all over Jim's shoes before passing out.

When he woke up he knew he was in Sickbay before he even opened his eyes. It was the smell of disinfectant, the steady beep of the life monitors, the not quite smooth rub of the biobed's fabric beneath him. He knew it couldn't be real, but it felt real, and he indulged himself helplessly.

"Doctor."

He opened his eyes before he could stop himself, but to his shock he didn't wake up back in the Argelian hotel room. He was still on the biobed, and Christine Chapel was staring down at him. Her uniform was showing an unusual amount of midriff, but otherwise, she was just like he remembered.

He all but fell out of bed in his hurry to get up and as Chapel moved forward to support him he wrapped her up in his arms. She froze, and as the moment stretched on never actually relaxed into him. But she was warm and real and McCoy was insane but he didn't care. He'd missed her, like he'd missed them all, but he hadn't realized just how much until he could touch her again.

"Doctor," she said again, this time more strained, and McCoy let go. Chapel tucked a strand of her hair back into place primly. "How are you feeling?"

"Good," McCoy replied, still dazed. Had he snapped? Everything felt so real. But no, he realized, not quite, because Chapel had boots up to her thighs, and there was a knife tucked into one side. "I mean, terrible. I think I'm insane."

"You're not insane, sir." Chapel was still all business, but underneath there was the same mocking tone he'd missed so much.

It only made it hurt more, to try to explain that this was all in his head. "But I can't – you're all…"

"Dead?"

He nodded.

"The captain will explain."

He sat back down on the bed at Chapel's insistence, and tried not to worry about this explanation. He knew this couldn't be happening, no matter what his senses told him, but if Jim told him something that could be true, something _plausible_ , it was going to make it that much harder to get back to the real world.

McCoy got embarrassingly sentimental when Jim showed up again, waltzing into the room like he owned the place, something tucked under his left arm. McCoy had to remind himself that he was still mad at Jim for punching him. And that none of this was actually happening.

"Report?" Jim asked, clearly addressing Chapel although his eyes were on McCoy.

"Stable, sir," Chapel said as she glanced at the monitors. "No head injury, rehydrated. He could stand to eat and rest some more."

" _He_ is sitting right here, and _he_ is fine." No way in hell was McCoy being ignored in his own Sickbay. In his own damn delusion.

Jim smiled faintly. "Of course you are. Dismissed, Chapel."She was gone without a look back, and Jim threw whatever he was holding at him. McCoy caught it automatically and realized it was a uniform. He hadn't worn one since the brass had not so gently ushered him into "medical leave." He ran the textured fabric through his fingers and tried not to choke.

"You're going to need that if you want anyone to take you seriously." He cocked his head at McCoy's scrubs, looked him over like he was trying to find something.

"What the hell is going on?"

Not that he wanted to hear it. It wouldn't be true, no matter what Jim said, no matter how familiar the uniform felt in his hands.

Jim shrugged, and some people might even think he was relaxed. McCoy had known him far too long for that, and braced himself. But none of his experience prepared him for what Jim said next: "I was chatting with Ambassador Selek about the unfortunate loss of my CMO to the virus, when he just happened to mention the possibility of manifold alternate realities. So I check it out and figure: he's a doctor without a ship, I've got a ship without a doctor. A plague's a plague, right?"

"What?" It wasn't the answer he was expecting. Not one he would ever have come up with. "What are you – what?"

Jim laughed. "Come on, you don't still think this is all in your head, do you? Chapel said you didn't have a concussion, and I sure as hell noticed some differences back in your universe."

"Back in my…" He knew he was gaping like he was trying to catch flies, but his brain couldn't seem to catch up to his jaw.

"This isn't where you were before," Jim went on, making a sweeping gesture. "I'm Captain James Kirk, and you're on the Imperial Starship Enterprise."

Of all the fucked up things he'd expected from his own head, that wasn't one of them. He floundered. "So – so you're saying this is some sort of… other universe?" It sounded even dumber aloud, but that was the only thing he could grasp. If it wasn't a disease or some sort of crazy injury, then he was out of his depth to explain it.

"Bingo."

He still felt like he was struggling to catch up to something. "So you're real?"

"You want another punch to prove it?"McCoy almost said yes, just to _know_ , but he settled for touching Jim's face. He allowed himself that much. Jim held still, his eyes boring holes as McCoy ran his fingertips over Jim's cheekbone, down the soft side of his jaw to the fine scars next to his mouth.

This was real.

He jerked his hand away. James Kirk was standing right in front of him, and he was on the Enterprise. "And Spock? And Scott and Uhura and Chekov and Sulu?" And Riley and Gaila and that crazy monkey Keenser and everyone else he'd lost?

"All of them. Spock will be here in a moment." Jim still looked like he was waiting for something.

McCoy realized what that must be. "And this – this is an imperial starship."

"Damn straight." He actually looked smug about it. "None of your nancy-boy Federation here."

Before McCoy could respond to that – and he had quite a bit to say, now that his Broca's area had fired up again – Spock entered the room. His goatee, as perfectly groomed and unappealing as his haircut, was somehow the most striking difference McCoy had seen yet.

It didn't matter. It was Spock. If there was anyone McCoy really shouldn't hug it was him, but his treacherous heartbeat still doubled at the sight of him.

"Doctor," Spock greeted evenly, staring with the same unblinking intensity that he had in Jim's room. It was unnerving, irritating. McCoy resisted the urge to scowl.

Fuck, he'd missed being pissed at Spock.

"Spock's going to be watching you while you treat the plague on Argelius II," Jim said.

"But I already – oh, but maybe here – dammit." Because if he hadn't gone down to cure the plague here and they're all alive then maybe there's still time to stop this tragedy. "You have to do something. Some of the Argelians, they're the ones who started this whole plague, and they're going to attack."

Jim and Spock didn't look as worried as they should be. 

"We were aware," Spock said.

"So what are you going to do about it?" He was handing their own safety to them from another goddamn universe and they were looking at him like he's crazy.

"We have already dealt with that problem," Spock replied blandly.

"You – you mean they tried to attack already?"

"We attended to the terrorists when we first arrived at Argelius II, having suspected such agenda to begin with."

"But –" If McCoy kept reeling like this he was going to get vertigo. "How did you prove it?" That had been the problem. Jim had known, like he always knew, but without anything more than a hunch it had been impossible to do anything but try to treat the plague.

Spock's eyebrows drew ever so slightly closer together. "You overcomplicate the matter, Doctor, as ever. We determined where the culprits were and eliminated them. Now only the plague remains to be dealt with."

"Jim?" McCoy knew he sounded helpless, but he couldn't be hearing this right.

Jim's smile was reassuring, almost patronizing. "Don't look like such a kicked puppy. You of all people know they had it coming." He stepped closer, and McCoy's frustration warred with the need to inhale him. "You know what they would have done with all that firepower we found."

"But you can't – you – dammit, man, you can't just kill people like that." He couldn't get the words out with the strength he needed. These weren't things he'd ever had to explain, to Jim of all people. "You need a trial. Proof."

"You know that was a luxury we couldn't afford. If we'd waited for proof we'd be as dead and buried as your ship. Is that what you want?"

He couldn't bring himself to respond.

"They died quickly and painlessly, McCoy. Can you say the same for the ones in your universe?"

McCoy shook his head just to try to rid himself of the memory. They had eventually proven that the terrorists were responsible for the plague, and the death of the Federation's goddamn flagship, but it had been on Argelian land, and it had been an Argelian punishment that the criminals had faced. No murders had been committed on Argelius II since ancient times, and the ancient punishments had been far from quick or painless. McCoy may have hated those men and women for what they'd done to his friends, but that hadn't made sleep easier when he realized that they'd faced the deaths they had partly because of McCoy's testimony on the disease.

And none of that had happened here. 

The executions weren't ethical. McCoy was sure of that. But they had prevented so much, and in the end were far kinder than the deaths the terrorists had eventually suffered.

No. He couldn't go down that road. McCoy was no philosopher but even he knew that sort of circular thinking led nowhere good. "I can't, Jim. I can't condone that."

Something ugly rippled up onto Jim's face before diving back down just as quickly. "We still have to cure the plague. I know you can do that. I need you to do that."

"Jim." He didn't pretend it was anything other than a plea.

"You know how fast it's killing." Jim's voice was hard. "Are you going to let people die when you can stop it?"

It was Jim's captain's voice, one McCoy rarely heard but goaded him to action every time. Even now, when Jim was explaining away murder, he couldn't resist it. He shook his head.

Jim beamed. "Good. Spock, escort Dr. McCoy to his quarters."

"I don't need a goddamn nanny."

Jim laughed. "That's the spirit." 

He wound up following Spock, although it felt strange to leave Jim behind in Sickbay. Sickbay itself was both deeply familiar and horribly foreign. There was a dent in the table he passed by that he remembered making, but the walls were covered in an unfamiliar seal, an ancient sword pressed through Earth.

Spock was silent as they walked to his quarters, and McCoy passed by a dozen familiar faces but no one looked at him. McCoy felt frustration brimming at that, but he couldn't bring himself to pitch a fit.

"I will be here at the beginning of alpha shift to escort you to the medical bay," Spock said as they reached his door.

"You don't have to." McCoy keyed himself in, absurdly pleased to watch his code work.

"On the contrary, I have orders from the Captain to accompany you both to and from your work." He lingered at the doorway, awkward in that stiff Vulcan way, unmoved even when McCoy gestured him in.

"Why? Jim afraid I'm gonna get lost?"

Spock arched an eyebrow. "He did not share his reasoning with me."

McCoy was too tired for this crap. The Enterprise was back and he was probably off his rocker and Jim— _Jim_ —condoned murder. If Spock wanted to pull his cagey Vulcan bullshit then let him. 

"Be that way."

Spock nodded once. He still didn't move.

"Something on your mind?" McCoy struggled to keep a civil tongue in his head. It was ironically comforting: getting irritated with Spock’s inscrutable Vulcan ways was almost as familiar as being exasperated with Jim.

"It is nothing of importance."

If it wasn't important Spock wouldn't be standing there like he had a hypo shoved up his ass. " _What_?"

In reply, Spock slowly brought his hand up—let it hesitate between them as he stared, expressionless. 

McCoy and Spock had had their share of intimate moments. There were only so many times you could stitch up a man’s insides or let him carry you to safety or just huddle for warmth on the frozen tundra before you ran out of things to complain about and just appreciated that he was there. McCoy and Spock had both dedicated themselves to taking care of Jim, but eventually they had to take care of each other, too.

But they weren’t on any foreign planet now.

McCoy wanted to say something, to ask why Spock was being so damn illogical, but something in Spock's eyes stopped him.

Spock dropped his hand to clasp it behind his back. "I had not expected to see you again. Your counterpart is dead."

"Oh." His irritation evaporated, leaving just the exhaustion. He wasn't sure how to respond. Condolences seemed self-serving, and Spock was far from the hug and cry type anyway. It hadn't really hit him that the other version of him was dead until now, when Spock stood expressionless before him.

The silence ticked by.

Finally Spock didn't quite clear his throat. "That is all I wished to convey." 

He turned on his heel and was almost at the door when McCoy called, "Spock."

Spock stopped, didn't turn.

"It's good to see you too."

Spock's spine got straighter, if it was possible. "Good night, doctor. I will return at seven forty five."

Then he was gone.

McCoy sat on his bed, unchanged from how he remembered it, and tried to process this latest shock. He was in a parallel universe, where the Enterprise never crashed and burned, with an Empire instead of a Federation, and Spock had done the Vulcan equivalent of throwing confetti in the air at his return. The laughter started, rising out of him in hard jerks and before he knew it he was in tears and his ribs ached.

Spock, of all people.

He'd never thought about it, what the ship would do if they lost him. They'd all had their parts to play, but Jim had always been the linchpin. He'd always assumed that most would mourn the loss of a crewmember as they always did, and Jim would miss his friend as well. And now he'd gotten his own little Christmas Carol, and found that in his maybe-delusion of an Enterprise without him, Jim just wanted his doctor back and Spock missed a friend. 

McCoy had always left the physics to people better suited to it, and now those same people were telling him to trust what years of medical training insisted was a lie. But if this whole thing was in his head then he wasn't sure there was any cure for it. How did you cure yourself of your every wish come true? 

Anyway, the wrong things were different. If this was all in his mind there would be no empire, no mass murder, no tension in Jim under his hands.

He was exhausted now, although he'd done nothing more than wake up in Sickbay, see old friends, and walk through halls he'd memorized. He was alone in a totally different universe where his double was _dead_ and the crew carried knives. Even if he wasn't insane he was in deep shit. But no matter how many differences and painful possibilities about this world came to mind, all McCoy could feel was deep, giddy relief.


	3. Chapter 3

**Don't pander to me, kid.**

The thing people who had never experienced loss could never understand was the denial. It wasn't just an automatic reaction to the slap in the face of death. It lingered, the desperate subconscious hope, the _assumption_ , that somehow everything would go back to the way it had been. McCoy had been trying to quash and drown that hope ever since he'd first heard the news. As a doctor he knew more than most that death could not be undone. 

There was no going back.

But now, all of a sudden, he had. His life had been handed back to him on a silver platter. Every face should have reminded him that everyone he'd known was gone, that he didn't belong here, but they didn't. Chapel was not as friendly as he remembered, that was true, but she still put up with his bitching and poked holes in his theories and was generally the best nurse he could ever hope for. Spock was even more familiar: he arched his eyebrows and modulated his voice and sassed him so much that McCoy could almost forget about the beard.

Except when he couldn't. 

"I thought Uhura didn't like facial hair," he couldn't help teasing on the second day, as they reached McCoy's quarters after his shift. Trying to make Spock blush had been an occasional pastime amongst the human crew, and McCoy prided himself on being good at it.

"I fail to see how that is relevant."

"Oh, come on, Spock, it's not a secret."

"What is not a secret?"

He rolled his eyes. "You and Uhura."

Spock's eyebrows leapt up, his lips not quite pursed. "Uhura's opinion regarding facial hair is in no way a factor in our _professional_ relationship, doctor, and may I remind you that I have no appreciation for the subtleties of human humor."

"Of course you don't." He didn't quite shift under the disapproving weight of Spock's gaze. "I guess it's different here."

"Indeed," Spock intoned, before turning away.

It was annoying, being on the back foot, figuring out things that he should have already known. The virus, for instance, had mutated into something twice as tangled and violent as the thing he had cured months ago. And he had yet to understand why the nurses rarely looked him in the eye, why the rest of the crew avoided him altogether as Spock escorted him through the halls. 

He was getting pretty damn tired of that too, truth be told. Four days of nothing but his quarters, Sickbay, and the hall between had him itching to run from the bridge all the way to engineering and shake everybody just so they'd look at him.

Then there was Jim, who wouldn't let him come to the bridge and refused to let him treat patients and condoned executions without trials, who swaggered into Sickbay after McCoy had announced that he had a possible cure and smiled so brightly that McCoy had to smile back. He waited while Jim inspected McCoy's creation and then ordered it to be duplicated and tested planetside.

"Knew you could do it, McCoy," Jim said afterwards, another smack in the face. He missed the stupid nickname more than he wanted to admit, the way Jim curled the word in his mouth just so. Then Jim thumped him on the shoulder in that exasperatingly familiar way, his warm hand lingering.

"Maybe now you'll let me actually do my damn job and go down there and treat some patients." The most annoying thing about making the cure had been an inability to work with living subjects. Jim had been adamant about McCoy remaining in Sickbay, working with models of the virus instead of specimens.

"No can do, doc. Don't want that lightning to strike twice."

"Don't call me 'doc', and don't assume I'm gonna make the same mistakes the other me did. I didn't get the virus back home, and I won't here."

"For your sake, I hope that's true." Jim beamed, disarming even with the sword on his chest and the knife at his hip. McCoy tried to hold onto his anger but it was a lost cause. "I could give you the report on the antidote over dinner, if you want." It felt strange, trying to get face time with Jim. Before, Jim always used to barge into McCoy's life, if never quite as far as McCoy had wanted him to.

Jim shrugged. "Sure."

McCoy could see right through that casual crap, but he didn't really get what Jim was so worked up over. They could sort through it over dinner. "I'll comm you when my shift is done?"

"Oh, no, not today. Can't. Soon, though." Jim's smile grew toothier, like McCoy had insulted him. "I'll give you a call when I'm free." His accompanying gesture was equal parts dismissive and defensive.

McCoy was too lost to be annoyed. "All right." Well, maybe he wasn't. "It's dinner, not a goddamn marriage proposal."

Already at the door, Jim waved absent acknowledgement without even turning around.

 _Dick_.

After that there was nothing to do but fume and wait for the results about the antidote. Sitting on his thumbs just gave him more time to brood and worry. It got old quick. He wasn't about to try to sneak around behind his own nurses' backs to help people, so he cornered Chapel and cut to the chase. 

"Why doesn't Jim want me working with patients?"

"He didn't share his reasoning with me."

McCoy had no idea what had crawled up her ass and died, but he'd had enough. "Work with me, Chapel. What's the big deal?"

Chapel shook her head rigidly. "It wasn't my decision, doctor. Don't."

"I want to help. Don't tell me you don't need it." Even after only a week he'd seen that this ship got more than its fair share of patients.

Chapel relaxed a little at that, and McCoy crowed inside at getting through to her. But then she cocked her head, lowered her lashes. "I might. What's it worth to you?"

What the hell was she talking about? "Only seven years of med school and another three in Starfleet. Don't be stupid."

Chapel crossed her arms.

McCoy wanted to tear his hair out. When he spoke the words were all tangled: "This is my job. Let me help." 

Chapel finally softened, looked more like the nurse he remembered. "It really is about helping for you, isn't it?" She sounded a lot more surprised than she had any right to be. "Fine. But leave me out of it."

She brushed past him. McCoy was left with the strong urge to hypo someone really hard.

Hell with it.

McCoy was in an alternate universe but ensigns were apparently morons everywhere, and engineers couldn't keep out of trouble for the life of them. Chapel watched him the first few times, but didn't say anything, and the other nurses took her cue. It felt like a victory—not over Chapel, or even Jim. McCoy had assumed that the last time he'd ever hold a hypo on the Enterprise would be his last hurried preparations before going down to the planet. 

Jim had hovered, worrying too much and standing too close. Spock had stood with his hands clasped behind his back, unnervingly quiet; the only time he ever resisted a snipe at McCoy was when something was weighing on him. The memory of their worried faces had haunted him for months. Now he was back, safe in the knowledge that Jim and Spock were alive and nearby, and every healthy patient he sent out was a bandage over his own wounds.

He patched up seven people before Sulu showed up.

Sulu and he hadn't even been that close, beyond the bond of doing stupid shit on foreign planets and putting up with Jim's antics. But he remembered when Sulu's empty coffin had been lowered into the ground, how his parents had looked at the posthumous medal like they couldn't understand it. 

It was enough to make a man giddy to see him alive.

It wasn't Sulu, he had to remind himself, seeing the ragged scar tissue running down this man's face. The Sulu he'd known was nothing but ash and memories.

"Fencing again?" he asked before one of the nurses could jump in. That had been the reason for half of Sulu's visits to Sickbay, and the way he was holding his bleeding arm was familiar.

"Something like that," admitted Sulu.

"Let me see, then." He batted Sulu's hand out of the way. The cut on Sulu's arm was neat and bleeding heavily, clearly from a blade. If it wasn't from fencing… "A knife wound?"

Sulu smiled, twisting the pink scarflesh running down his cheek. It was so far from his old grin that McCoy almost recoiled. "I had a slight disagreement with our navigator."

" _Chekov_ did this?" He couldn't keep the shock out of his voice. He wasn't a complete moron; he knew they had to be carrying the knives for a reason. But Chekov? The kid could barely fight a cold.

The smile turned disdainful. "You really are new, aren't you?"

McCoy bristled at that. "You want a band aid or you want to pass out from blood loss?"

Sulu shifted his weight. "What's it going to cost me?"

"A 'thank you' would be nice," McCoy said as he reached for Sulu's arm.

Sulu smacked his hand away, splattering blood on his scrubs. "Come on, McCoy. It's info or a job, same as always."

"What are you talking about? Give me your arm before you collapse, you hard-headed–"

"I'm not writing you a blank check here, okay? Now name your terms before I go to Chapel."

"My _terms_?" He was the doctor and this was his Sickbay and he was tired of running into brick walls whenever he did normal things like his _job_. "My terms are that you shut the hell up and let me do what I'm here to do. Do I come up to the bridge and demand to pay you for flying this death trap?"

There was a silence after that, broken only by the measured clack of Chapel's heels as she walked over. Chapel had always been on top of things, rarely a hair out of place, but right now she could be carved out of marble. Sulu's gaze flicked between her and McCoy, and finally he had the decency to hold his arm out. He stood stock still as McCoy took it. 

McCoy kept his grip gentle as he inspected the wound. Minimal muscle damage but it was a bleeder and had to hurt like hell. He grabbed a clotter, disinfectant and the dermal regenerator, but afterward found himself lost in his own Sickbay for the first time. 

He rattled through a few drawers before checking inventory discretely and cursing under his breath. The heavy analgesics were all there, but if he didn't want to put Sulu down for surgery or let him wander around loopy for the next few days he was up shit creek. He turned back to Sulu, who was shifting his weight slightly and had a growing puddle by his feet.

Fuck.

"Sorry if this stings." Sulu shifted even more at the apology, staring hard where McCoy poked at his wound. He cleaned it quickly as he could and did a thorough job with the regenerator. The muscle underneath was still healing, which meant it had to still be painful, but at least it wouldn't get infected. "Tell me if you're still having twinges in a few days."

"Whatever." Sulu shrugged his arm experimentally before giving McCoy one last measuring look. "Should have picked info, doc."

Sulu's words stayed in his head for the rest of his shift, relentless as cancer. His computer loomed in his quarters, untouched. He'd always believed in getting answers from people.

Spock turned up like clockwork at the end of his shift. "You are distressed."

"Figured that out on your own, did you?" he snapped as they started down the hall to the lift. Spock's social backwardness grated at the best of times.

"You misunderstand." They stepped into the lift. "I was attempting to inquire as to the nature and cause of your distress."

"So what, we can hug and cry and sing kumbaya?"

"I had intended only verbal interaction, doctor." Spock looked Vulcanly mortified. Spock doing sensitive chats? But he felt bad now that he saw Spock was genuinely trying to be helpful. "It’s just that I'm not exactly in Kansas anymore."

Spock arched an eyebrow.

"This ship is different from what I'm used to."

Nothing that couldn't be changed, he reminded himself. Hell, throwing out the rulebook was Jim's favorite pastime. He just had to talk to him.

"I see." Spock gazed straight ahead as the lift started to move. "Perhaps I can be of some assistance. As First Officer I am required to oversee all of the ship's protocol, and would not be averse to answering any questions you might have."

It was just the kind of bland, thoroughly decent offer Spock would make. "I'd appreciate that."

"If you are amenable," Spock continued, concentrating on the wall of the lift like it had Surak's teachings carved into it, "We could return to my quarters and discuss the matter while consuming a meal."

"Oh." 

That was a new one. Not that he and Spock hadn't been friends, but they'd rarely had occasion to spend time alone together. There had always been Jim between them, and Spock had had Nyota besides. By silent agreement they hadn't been the kind of friends who shared small talk. "All right." The words stumbled off his tongue.

He didn't realize how trapped he felt until the lift door opened. This was stupid. It was Spock, for heaven's sake. He was dying for someone to talk to and an opportunity to go anywhere that wasn't his rooms or Sickbay, and Spock was offering both. He wasn't the one he'd expected to be offering help and dinner – that would have been Jim, or even Chapel – but the fact that he had should just be one more reason to be grateful. It was Spock, after all, who had been completely dependable since McCoy had first shown up, and all McCoy had done in return was snap at him.

He bumped Spock's shoulder lightly with his own as they walked down the hall. "Thanks."

"Thanks are unnecessary, doctor. It is in the ship's best interests to have a doctor who understands its operating procedures."McCoy rolled his eyes, feeling the closest to relaxed he'd managed since he'd first beamed down to Argelius II.

They were halfway to Spock's quarters when Jim ran into them.

"Where are you going?" There was a sharpness to the question McCoy couldn't dissect. 

"Heading to Spock's rooms for dinner."

But Jim wasn't paying attention to him. He was looking at Spock, his expression oil on water. "Spock?"

Spock said nothing.

"I asked to go to Spock's quarters to discuss some of the ship's protocol." McCoy wasn't sure why he lied, only knew that it felt right when Jim's gaze shifted over to him. "If he's got to follow me around everywhere I figured I'd at least get a meal out of him."

Jim smiled, but there was still something predatory in the crinkles around his eyes. "That's too bad. I thought we might finally have that dinner together."

There had been many moments where McCoy wanted to do nothing more than smack Jim stupid for being a total jackass. For all of Jim's virtues he could be an impetuous, selfish brat. But this didn't have the same spontaneous ring of Jim's usual moments. McCoy scowled. 

Spock finally piped up: "Naturally your engagement takes precedence, Captain." He sounded like he'd rather be pissing glass, even under the polite cool, and McCoy didn't get it.

"I'm sure we could fit three at the table if–"

"That won't be necessary, doctor."

Spock stalked off, heels clicking.

"Hungry?" Jim asked, cutting off the sight of Spock's disappearing back. McCoy wanted to be mulish, because that had been plain old bad manners, but Jim was here and he smelled the same and there was nothing in his smile except frank joy.

"I guess." He was hungry. There was always a hunger in him.

They shared dinner with a companionable silence McCoy had missed too much to think about. He could almost convince himself that everything was like it had been: he and Jim would shoot the shit until they were grinning with exhaustion, and then Jim would bail and McCoy would jerk off thinking about what would happen if Jim ever decided to stay.

"What's on your mind?" Jim asked as if on cue.

"We're out of any kind of low level pain management–pills, topical applications."

Jim stared. "What do you need those for? This isn't kindergarten."

McCoy had been accused of beating people over the head with his title, but for all that people seemed to constantly forget what he was. "I'm a doctor," he practically spelled out. "I'm supposed to be making people feel better."

"No," Jim said, putting his utensils down. "You're supposed to be working on the plague. I told you that."

"I _am_ working on the plague. There's nothing I can do until we get the tests back, since you insist on being such a mother hen, and in the meantime I'm going to do my job as Chief Medical Officer of this ship."

"I don't want you involved. Let the nurses handle the scrapes and bruises," Jim ordered, sounding pissed. 

McCoy had had enough. "Scrapes and – Sulu came into Sickbay today bleeding like a stuck pig and I'm not even supposed to –"

"You didn't treat him." Jim leaned forward, his voice dangerously level.Two could play that game. McCoy got in his face. "Damn right I did. I'm not going to sit around with my head up my ass just because–"

"What did he give you?"

"He _gave_ me a _headache_ , just like you are now," he all but spat in Jim's face, inches from his own. 

For a hard moment Jim glared at him, breath hot and heaving while something tangled in McCoy's stomach. Jim had always been a mercurial man, rarely repressed, but for the first time McCoy saw something held tight in check. He licked suddenly dry lips. 

Abruptly Jim pulled back, settling into more familiar stubbornness. "You don't know how this works."

"And how the hell _could_ I when you keep me locked up in a goddamn tower and no one will tell me shit! Dammit, Jim, just tell me what's going on. Or don't tell me, I don't care, but let me do my job the way I do it. I'm not going to break, okay? I've already – I've already seen the worst of it." Anything this place had to offer had to be better than what he'd left behind.

"No," Jim said with dead certainty. "You haven't."

"What the hell do you know?" He sounded like he did with his ex-wife, but fuck it. Jim had to know. "You weren't there; you didn't see this ship get shot down out of the fucking sky. You didn't have to look at what was left of your mangled corpse on the table. You died screaming, Jim, all of you." 

The memories ganged up on him. He wouldn't go back to that. He couldn't.

Jim broke his reverie: "I'll see about pain meds once we leave Argelius II." His eyes crawled over McCoy critically, like he an expected an attack.

"I want to see the rest of the crew, too." Even if they were all like Sulu. He needed to see them, needed to replace the memories of miles of fire and blood with living, vibrant bodies.

Jim smiled as he picked up his fork and knife again, all traces of anger gone. "Well, that depends–what'll you give me for it?"

McCoy blinked at the sudden transition. "What do you want?" 

Jim gave him a _look_ , like he had so much to explain he couldn't figure out what to say first. He shook his head abortively. "You can go where you like starting tomorrow."

McCoy nodded, swallowing his confusion. He'd made progress. He could figure the rest out later. "Thanks."

"But I'll have to assign you a guard. And stay away from engineering. And don't pick fights."

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, mother. I'll be sure to wash behind my ears, too."

Jim's laughter was incredulous as he shook his head, strangely rueful. "Oh, McCoy." He stopped laughing but his eyes were still ringing with it. He looked more like the Jim McCoy knew than ever before. "The more things fucking change."

McCoy stared at Jim's lips, the way they twisted around every syllable. He was in another goddamn universe and Jim was still that far away. "You've no idea."

"I'll drink to that." It wasn't the same Jim, McCoy remembered belatedly as he matched Jim's offered toast and watched him sip and swallow.

But those were the same scars on his face, and the same smile that crinkled his eyes, and McCoy was sure nothing else could be as important.


	4. Chapter 4

**Space is disease and danger.**

His new guards turned up before his shift the next day. They introduced themselves as Conliffe and Park, trailed behind him as he walked to Sickbay, and then shuffled annoyingly at the doorway until McCoy's temper snapped. "If you're going to hang around, make yourself useful."

"Yes, sir," they chorused, sounding eager enough and cracking their knuckles. He gave them hypos to fill.

"It's not brain surgery," he said when they stared at him blankly.

"It's just... not the kind of work we usually do, doctor." Conliffe sounded oddly tentative for a man his size.

_You don't know how this works._

McCoy shook his head.

"This is a medical bay." _His_ medical bay. "This is the kind of work we do here."

"Yes, doctor."

They weren't the first officers he'd pressed into service; if there were people in Sickbay able to do work, there was work to be done. He expected some disgruntled looks and maybe some grumbling. He wasn't prepared for Conliffe and Park meekly obeying with only tentative glances over their shoulders as they worked.

Chapel caught him staring as he worked, and smiled at him as if they were sharing a private joke. He smiled back on principle—it had been too long since he'd last seen Chapel smile—but he didn't get it.

He found himself missing Spock, oddly enough. It had only been about a day since he had so succinctly excused himself, but McCoy felt it. The thought of losing any of them, in whatever way, was unbearable, but Spock was also the one man who seemed ready to give him answers. He wanted them, and he wanted to apologize, for Jim's rudeness and his own silence.

At least now with the guards he could explore the ship, and find Spock himself. He left Sickbay after his shift ended and headed for the lift, nearly rocking on the balls of his feet at the prospect of visiting the bridge. 

Conliffe and Park stood behind him in the lift, hands behind their back and faces closed. Guilt prodded at McCoy. These men were assigned to protect him—although from what, McCoy couldn't say—and he'd had them doing grunt work for hours.

"Thanks," he managed, "For helping today."

"You're welcome, doctor," he heard after a pause.

McCoy nodded, wondering if he should say more. Then the door whirred open, and everything else on his mind dimmed in comparison. 

Jim was lounging in his chair, commanding and magnetic. He caught sight of McCoy and his smile gleamed bright as the bridge, but surprise tinted his features. "Doctor McCoy."

Sulu and Chekov whipped their heads around in sync, while Uhura turned more slowly in her chair. Spock was not present.

"Hi, Jim." He resisted the urge to shift under the stares.

"What can I do for you?"

He scowled, bit his lips, and decided he'd had enough of being on the back foot. "A man can't come up to the bridge to say hi to people he thought were still dead because they didn't have the decency to come down to Sickbay themselves?"

Jim boggled while Sulu laughed and Chekov looked confused. Uhura got up and gave him a hug, eyes warm and sharp as ever.

"It's good to see you." She smiled like Chapel had, something else gone over his head, but it was quickly subsumed by his joy at seeing her. He grinned, and kept grinning until he saw that Sulu looked ready to whip out that crazy sword of his.

"Something to say, Mr. Sulu?" Jim asked.

"No, Captain." Sulu turned back to his console.

Chekov snickered.

"How's that arm doing?" It was the only topic he could think of, god help him.

"Yes, how is that arm doing?" Chekov sneered.

"I'm going to—" Sulu stopped short as Chekov's knife appeared at his neck faster than McCoy could follow.

" _Boys._ " McCoy jumped at his tone, and then froze as he saw Jim has his phaser aimed at them, thumb on the trigger. He was smiling.

Uhura chuckled into her hand.

They shrugged and turned back to the console. McCoy took deep breaths. The world had gone insane. But as he cautiously took up his position behind Jim's chair, a deep sense of right still seeped into him.

"What are you doing?" Jim asked, eyes narrowed and suspicious.

He honestly didn't know? "Looking at the stars."

Jim blinked slowly. "All right."

McCoy allowed himself a small smile.

He watched the tense set of Jim's shoulders as it slowly relaxed. The spare cut of the gold vest meant half of his muscles were in plain sight, and McCoy could practically count them off as they loosened. Eventually he turned and grinned the way McCoy remembered. McCoy barely managed not to choke under the force of it.

The hell he didn't know how things were done.

"Dr. McCoy," Chekov asked during a lull, "Is it true that there are no agonizers in the other universe?"

"What's an agonizer?"

Jim buried his face in his hands. Chekov smirked.

"What?"

"The joke is." Chekov got his amusement under control, but barely. "Bend over and I will show you."

McCoy rolled his eyes. "Well, we certainly had plenty of those back home."

It hurt to think about the universe he'd come from, and he knew it always would, but watching Jim and the others laugh soothed the ache.

"Have you heard the one about the Orion and the creature from M-113?" Jim asked with the usual innocent look no one ever bought.

"You're the one who told it to me, ass." McCoy remembered the hot rush that had always accompanied a dirty joke from Jim, the way he'd had to be drunk or risk stuttering pathetically through a laugh. Jim had a way of leaning in, eyes knowing, licking his lips like he was deadly serious.

The joke was always on McCoy.

"Hey, I heard it from the Prime Minister of Ecton III."

"Who just wanted to expand your cultural horizons, I'm sure."

"If I remember correctly, he wanted to demonstrate a scientific phenomenon native to M-113."

He'd heard this before—had this same damn conversation before—but Jim was lit up the way he always was when he was setting up for a joke and McCoy wouldn't take it from him. He arched an eyebrow. "Is that so?"

"Yup." Jim smirked. "He sucked the salt right out of me."

Sulu and Chekov snickered while Uhura shook her head, the same way they always did at what passed for Jim's humor.

"Did that line work on your Jim, too?" Uhura asked when there was silence. 

"Hell if I know." He'd watched Jim leave with the handsome prime minister, laughing and smiling. McCoy had forced himself to turn away, had another bourbon to drown the frothing thing inside him that wanted to smash the prime minister's face in.

Finally, when the laughs had dulled to smiles and Jim was sprawled in his chair with the confident ease McCoy had always admired in him, McCoy asked, "Doesn't Spock usually have this shift at the conn?"

"He's not here." Jim's expression didn't change, and if McCoy hadn't known him for years he might have been fooled.

Confused, McCoy kept his voice low, "So is he in the lab, do you think?"

Jim turned away. "I guess."

"I just wanted to say hello."

Jim shrugged.

"Maybe remind that pointy-eared bastard that he still owes me a meal."

"Go, then," Jim spat. The chair creaked in the silence that followed. Jim was gripping its arms tightly, his knuckles white and the veins of his forearms jumping.

Chekov, Sulu, and Uhura were all concentrating hard at their stations, as deliberately ignorant as McCoy's friends had been when he'd argued with the ex in front of them.

" _Fine_ ," he bit back as he left, Park and Conliffe two steps behind him. He smashed the button to close the lift door and told it bring him to the deck with Spock's lab.

He wanted to see Spock. Getting pissed at him was predictable, at least; the man's annoying habits were regular as clockwork in any universe.

The lift whirred open, and Conliffe and Park clacked behind him down the hall, stepping on his nerves. At least the hallway was empty, so there was no one to avoid his gaze or taunt him with a gold sash or a knife at their leg. By the time he turned into the hall with Spock's lab he was calling Jim ten different kinds of fool and himself a dozen more.

Spock was reading off a test tube when McCoy found him, wholly absorbed in his work but sure to hear McCoy coming anyway. He'd never managed to surprise the man in his life, although god knew Spock had crept up on him his fair share of times, staring in that sallow way of his. He turned as McCoy approached now, oddly—well, Vulcans never looked pleased, but receptive. "Doctor McCoy."

"Oh, so you do know who I am. I was afraid you'd forgotten, all this time you didn't see me."

Spock turned back to his readings. "This may shock you, doctor, but some departments aboard this ship are required to do more than press the switch on a tricorder."

"It's all right, darlin', you can say you missed me." McCoy grinned at Spock's muted outrage, the straight back and thrust out chin, ears practically pulled back like a cat's.

"Jim's in a mood," he continued when Spock ignored him, fussing over his tools with distinct pissiness. "In case you were planning on chit-chat. I know you two like your chess games."

It came out more of a question than he'd intended, fumbling off his tongue. Jim and Spock had always been the strongest part of the Enterprise, and a rocky start had only made them settle harder. It had been Jim who'd pushed him toward Spock in the first place, smoothing over his suspicions of a man who'd throw someone onto an ice planet. He and Jim had history, the bonds of friendship-and-nothing-more, and he and Spock had whatever it was they had, but Jim and Spock had been t'hy'la almost as soon as they'd stopped throttling each other.

"I have never enjoyed Jim's games." The words snapped through his thoughts. McCoy remembered Spock's _pon farr_ crisis, the way it had crept into his words before his hands started to tremble. Spock sounded like that now, and it hadn't been even close to seven years.

"Because Vulcans never have fun," he tried.

"The concept is foreign to us," Spock conceded slightly more levelly. But then he turned, hands clasped behind his back, and there was nothing level in his eyes. "But I believe you take my meaning."

It was staring him in the face. McCoy knew that. 

Any man who'd seen Jim and Spock at the height of their friendship would know when something had gone sour, and Spock wasn't saying it outright but he was still saying it, in his eyes and the tone of his voice. McCoy nodded, a little rueful, wondered if he ought to press. He'd always had plenty of stubbornness and never the right time to apply it. Too stubborn with Jocelyn, right up til she'd knocked down the door with the divorce papers, not enough with his father. Too much with Jim, who'd happily ignored his every hint until that one drunken, awful night when he'd had to say all the things McCoy had tried so hard not to hear before.

"You two were friends, you know," he said, staring at one of the computers along the wall. It didn't feel right to explain the way things ought to be between them, things from another life, another universe—even though these were the same two men who'd saved his life countless times, deep down. They were still saving it, right now, with this ship and this life. "Even liked each other, sometimes."

"The people you knew were in different circumstances," Spock said tightly.

McCoy shook his head. "Like what?"

"This conversation would be better conducted in my office." He stalked off, so far ahead the door nearly closed behind him before McCoy could follow. He stood stiffly, any hint of softness McCoy had seen when he walked in gone.

"Spock, what's gotten into—"

"I will explain this once, so please be silent." He braced himself, scrambling to think of what Spock could have to say, stupidly anxious. He'd watched Spock crumble under Jim's taunting, heard his control fray when he'd explained the Vulcan birds and bees and then seen its effects when he'd helped treat Nyota afterward. What could be worse than those?

"It is my understanding that in the universe you come from, our relationship remained platonic. This was not the case in my history, where my _pon farr_ created a union between us, one which the captain never approved of."

"And?"

Spock was silent.

"That's it?"

"I have no further comments on the matter."

It was infuriating, worse for the steady calm with which Spock said it, tyrannical in the way he held all McCoy wanted in his fist and gave him none. But Spock looked wrecked, if you knew where to look. McCoy watched his shoulders thrown back as he gripped his hands hard behind his back, the subtle jump of his throat as he cleared it, the way he looked anywhere but at McCoy.

He'd never considered Spock anything more than attractive, the same way he'd watched Uhura's skirt swish a few times. Spock was taken, Vulcan, and McCoy had always been too wrapped up in Jim, stupid as it was. They'd been friends, if not especially friendly, but Jim had always been their go between. He couldn't picture it, the two of them together without Jim, forced by Vulcan biology. It sounded awful; no wonder Jim hadn't approved.

McCoy's muscles twitched. He was an excellent doctor because he had a head for diagnostics, a sure hand in surgery, and the confidence for innovation, but that wasn't why he'd become a doctor. It was always in him, the need to reach out, and amongst humans it rarely went amiss—it wasn't always a hug or even a handshake, sometimes just a quick grasp, a clap on the shoulders as he shooed his patient away. He wasn't a tactile man so much as a poor communicator, preferred the simplicity of touch.

He stared across the distance between him and Spock and didn't know how to close it.

"Will that be all, doctor?"

He nodded and left quickly, couldn't quite face those drawn shadows under Spock's eyes.

Out in the hallway Conliffe and Park waited for him placidly, the same as when he'd left them. It was a bitter realization that they were the most constant people so far, soothing even though he shouldn't have been with them at all, never should have needed to be guarded on his own ship. He tried to tell himself that it made sense. The other McCoy must have died for lack of protection, somewhere on this labyrinth of a ship, all unfamiliar turns and dead ends where he thought he'd known the way. What the hell was everyone hiding?

The first shot rang out as if in answer. Conliffe screamed and doubled over, convulsing.

Park swore and shoved him back around the corner, but more phasers whined from behind him. He had to get to Conliffe, dropped low to dart over and then fell screaming as a line of fire ripped through his deltoid. He turned and saw two officers in science blues, phasers in one hand and knives in the other as they advanced.

"Son of a _bitch_." Park fired rapidly, pulling McCoy behind him like it would help. What the hell was going on? McCoy _knew_ these people.

"Whitestone! Smith!" he called out, trying to think of what kind of space disease would cause this madness. 

Then there was an explosive pain as another officer appeared from round the bend and smashed his fist into McCoy's head. He lashed out blindly, hampered by Park in front of him and the wound to his arm. Park was still firing, swearing. More shots rang out on either side, and he felt another line rip through his right quadriceps. He collapsed under the burning pain, almost choking with it. No way these phasers were set to stun. 

If he got hit anywhere close to a vital organ he'd be dead in seconds. Conliffe was probably dead. He felt hazy, adrenaline roaring through him but muddled by the pain and confusion. More bodies on top of him, slippery with blood, too close for phaser fire and knives everywhere. Someone grabbed him, pulled him out, sliding along the blood on the floor. He stared up at Whitestone's snarling face and fumbled for his hypo, desperate for anything that would knock him out long enough to give McCoy a chance to get to a comm link.

Whitestone screamed, and was lifted away.

McCoy blinked, watched as if from afar as Spock lifted Whitestone up with one hand and reached for his neck with the other, twisting as if opening a jar. Whitestone's neck snapped loudly. Spock dropped him to the floor.

It was inhuman. Spock reached for the next man, dragging him off Park and throwing him against the wall. He slid down to the floor unconscious and Spock nodded, turned to the other two men with the same flat expression he always wore. He batted a phaser out of the way and snapped the arm of the man holding it, ripped his knife out of his other hand and threw it almost casually at the last man. As he sank to the floor, batting aimlessly at the knife buried in his belly, Spock took hold of the last man's throat, his expression slowly twisting as his hand tightened.

Crouching nearby and clutching a bleeding arm, Park laughed.

It snapped McCoy out of his sick reverie. "Spock!"

Spock turned, his knuckles whitening as his hand jerked. The last man—his name was Walker, McCoy had treated him for a phaser wound a year ago—gurgled and went limp. Spock let him go and he collapsed in a lifeless heap.

"You are injured." Spock tilted his head, as unaware he was covered in blood and surrounded by people he'd butchered.

McCoy turned away, slammed the comm link. "Chapel. I've got five dead and two injured. Deck 3. Phaser and knife wounds. Possible concussion."

"Yes, sir."

He ended the comm, tried to catch his breath as the spikes of fear lessened. He'd seen action before, but this was on his own ship, from people he'd treated. And Spock, who'd ripped into his own men like they were made of paper, who'd been frighteningly detached and then, god, and then—

Park moaned. 

McCoy jerked, limped over to him and batted his hands away from his torso. Two knife wounds, one bleeding heavily from his side. He pulled off his over-shirt, hampered by his burnt shoulder, and pressed it against the wound. Park watched wide-eyed, swearing as McCoy staunched the bleeding but not moving. Chapel would be here any minute. He'd be fine. 

"You are injured," Spock repeated quietly, far too close, and touched his wounded shoulder.

McCoy laughed, harsh even to his own ears.

"Are you injured elsewhere?" Spock asked.

"Go away," McCoy said. He couldn't handle anything else.

Spock pulled him away from Park, who shuffled back on his heels. He tried to push Spock away but Spock's hands were hot and indomitable as he gripped McCoy's shoulder. His expression was the same as ever, smooth as marble and just as inscrutable, his hair tacky with blood. 

He let go of his shoulders, brought his hand to McCoy's face, skimmed his fingertips along the side.

McCoy held his breath.

"McCoy!"Jim grabbed him by the arm, throwing him off balance and catching him just as fast, arms around him and panting in his face. Spock stood still behind him.

"Status?" Jim asked over his shoulder.

"Those men," McCoy began haltingly, but Spock cut him off, "Officers Conliffe, Whitestone and Walker are dead. Smith, Aful and Park remain alive."

"I want names." Jim's voice was tight as his grip. McCoy wanted to shut his ears.

"Obviously."

Chapel and two other nurses showed up then, followed by six security guards who went straight to the four attackers and Conliffe, heaving them up and carrying them off. Chapel and the other nurses went to Park, far more solicitous. "Check for muscle damage on Park," he called out, hearing his own voice as if from a distance.

Spock watched him silently.

"Come on," urged Jim. "Chapel needs to look at these."

"I know how to treat my own wounds."

Three steps away he stumbled. Spock was there instantly, holding him up. His hands felt the same as ever, supportive and alien-hot. McCoy froze. It was only when Jim pulled at his good shoulder that he stepped away, staring at Spock as he and Jim headed for the lift.

Jim watched him intently as he ran a regenerator over his leg and shoulder in Sickbay, silent until he reached for the tricorder to scan his head. "Let Chapel do it."

"I know what I'm doing."

"And I said let Chapel do it."

"We're in _my_ Sickbay."

"And this is _my_ ship. Chapel!"

He handed the tricorder over with a poor grace, and it turned out he only had a lump to deal with anyway, just as he'd thought.

"How's Officer Park?" he asked Chapel.

"In surgery for the ballistic trauma."

"I'll be in there in five."

"No," said Jim firmly.

"He saved my life." Park was someone he could thank in good conscience. "I owe it to him."

Jim was shaking his head before he'd even finished speaking. "I don't want you out until we find out who was behind the attack."

"I have a job to do."

"You're not going on duty, McCoy. That's an order."

"Fine." He headed for the door. "I'll be in my quarters."

"Mine." Jim caught up with him. "Mine are safer."

McCoy clenched his jaw. "Yes, Captain."

They took the lift in tense silence. 

McCoy refused to look at Jim even though he could feel Jim's eyes crawling on him. Jim had always stared, never seemed abashed by it—by anything, from the way he'd always dropped in on McCoy's life like McCoy existed solely to entertain him, endlessly aggravating and irritating and fucking endearing, when McCoy was a miserable semi-drunk with no wife and no motivation. That had always been their way: Jim pushing until McCoy let him in, McCoy inviting him in and Jim gently refusing. He felt crippled now that it was gone, something off balance in the way Jim stood too close, breath on McCoy's ear as he ignored him.

Then there was that other thing. He waited until the door had locked behind them with a gentle click, as if anything could keep out what had happened out there, what McCoy had realized, between the phaser fire and Jim's paranoia. "The other me didn't die from the virus."

"He didn't." Jim always smiled when he was caught, had ever since he'd left the door unlocked when he was fucking Carol just as McCoy came back from his shift. McCoy had always hated it with a force that ground his teeth and made the blood surge through his veins.

"What was it?"

"Akelian trithetamine. It's similar to the virus."

"Bullshit." Akelian poisons were easily traceable and brutally painful—a poison for revenge, for someone who cared more about causing pain than getting caught. What had the other McCoy done to make such an enemy? "What do you know about it—his death?"

Jim shrugged, lying in how easy he made it seem. "Spock will probably have a name for us in a few days."

McCoy didn't want to think about Spock. He saw that Jim kept his Saurian brandy in the same place as his, that the glasses were neatly lined up on the shelf he expected. He poured some for each of them and watched Jim gulp his the way he always did, with a timer going.

"It's not a race," he snapped. 

"I'll drink it how I want."

"You are such an _infant_ sometimes."

" _I'm_ not the one acting like a little girl," Jim hissed.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Jim's lip curled, ugly in a way McCoy had never seen before, his hand curled around the glass so tight it looked like it would shatter any second. "It means that if you want to suck Spock's dick so badly why you don't you just fucking say so?"

McCoy gaped, stalled until anger rushed hot into his mouth, all but frothing out of him. " _You_ were the one who assigned _him_ to _me_ , you asshole, and maybe if you weren't such a fucking dick about telling me _anything_ I wouldn't have to talk to him so much!" He slammed his cup down, sloshing alcohol all over his fingers. He swore, shaking his hand. But it was a damn shame to waste it, and he licked the rest off with barely a conscious thought, the burn of the alcohol tinged with the salt of his fingertips. "Christ, Jim, what are you—"

The breath rushed out of him as Jim shoved him hard, slammed him into the wall, and followed before he could suck in any air. Jim grabbed McCoy's wrist again, grip constricting.

"Jim," McCoy managed, but he couldn't find any words after that. Jim was lifting McCoy's hand to his mouth, wrapping his perfect lips around his brandy-slick fingers and sucked, one long slide from base to fingertips. He pulled off with an obscene pop, licked his lips with canine satisfaction.

"Jim?"

Jim said nothing.

"For Christ's sake, Jim, what the _hell_ —" Jim's lips cut off the rest.

Jim kissed like he did everything: brash and demanding. He shoved his tongue in McCoy's mouth, hot and slick, bit and sucked at McCoy's lips like he'd been starved for it.

"Wait." He pushed Jim away, held onto his bared arms. "Wait, what are you—"

Jim pressed his hip against McCoy's traitorous cock, which sat up and begged, made McCoy's heart stammer in his chest even when he _knew_ how futile it was. Jim leaned in close, cheek-to-cheek, breath hot against McCoy's neck as he groaned, "You want this."

"Fuck you." McCoy shoved him away. Jim's face had gone flat, his head lowered like it did when he was about to pounce, but he'd started it. Trust Jim to play dirty, to distract him like this. "Is that what this is about?"

He didn't know what he'd expected—anger, maybe, denial, that sleek smirk Jim used whenever he'd been busted. Pity, if he was feeling especially exasperating.

Jim grinned, hard enough to crack his face in two, cheeks stretched out to his ears and wrinkles bunched around his eyes. It was McCoy's favorite expression on him, such unadulterated happiness McCoy had always been hard pressed not to smile back. It was the way he looked when he knew something no one else did, usually that he was right. "You're something else, McCoy."

It hit McCoy suddenly, his anger skidding under the blow of Jim's smile and those words. This wasn't Jim, wasn't the same man he'd never confessed to, who'd made his own feelings all too clear.

But it was Jim who reached out again, took his jaw in that too firm hold, kissed him with the softest lips McCoy had ever felt on a man or a woman. Jim, who pushed him back into the wall, hands coming to rest on his hips, gripping and rubbing and running up his shirt. McCoy pulled him in closer, bit at Jim's lips, wrapped his arms around Jim's ribs and held him there, Jim's heartbeat under his hands and Jim's cock rubbing against his.

"Jim," he said, all he had left.

"I'm going to fuck you through the floor." Jim was still grinning like he'd been handed a second _Enterprise_. 

McCoy felt dizzy, drugged. He wanted all the layers between them gone, couldn't figure out how to make his hands leave Jim to take them off. Jim's eyes on him were electric, his hands even better. 

McCoy needed more.

He pulled his clothes off somehow, wound up with Jim's hands on his chest, shoving him onto the bed. He watched Jim shuck his clothes, felt like he was being stripped again. He reached out when Jim was naked, let him push him back onto the bed and clamber on top of him. He didn't care where Jim was, as long as he was here, skin to skin. His cock was hot and just barely pre-come wet against McCoy's, rubbing slow enough to drive McCoy crazy if he wasn't already. He'd ached for years to touch Jim when he wasn't sick or bleeding. Now he finally had the chance—the dimples on the bottom of his back, the tight cheeks of his ass, the sparse hair of his chest.

"Fuck." Jim latched onto his neck like he could draw the pulse right up through McCoy's skin, sucked a bruise like McCoy hadn't worn since he was a teenager. He should have been angry but all he could do was smile, huff a laugh before Jim's agile hips turned it into a groan.

He'd never seen a man scramble for lube so fast. It was cold on Jim's fingers, on his own, and he felt the shiver in Jim mirror his as he wrapped his hand around Jim's cock. Jim's hand on him was clever to the point of cruelty, had him panting like a mantra, "Come on, come on, come on."

It burned as Jim fucked into him, not enough give and too much at once, but McCoy couldn't stay still, couldn't get enough, pressed up and pulled down until Jim was all the way inside him. It had been years since he'd done it, but he'd been waiting for just as many. He felt glutted, his cock throbbing, all his organs in the wrong places. Jim had scars, long and blade-thin. McCoy ran his fingertips along them, his thoughts struggling to follow.

Jim's breath was as shaky as his own. "Fuck, McCoy."

" _Bones._ " He brushed the faded scars on the side of Jim's mouth. "Call me _Bones._ "

" _McCoy_ ," Jim repeated, smirking because he was an asshole.

McCoy's protests melted into moans as Jim began to thrust. It was all raw stretch and burn, making him shudder and scrabble on Jim's back for a better hold. He gave up, wrapped his hands around Jim's jaw and pulled him forward, kissed him wet and messy, all tongue and teeth as they breathed into each other. He felt himself spiraling out of control, even with just the haphazard brushes Jim gave his cock as he thrust.

"Look at you," Jim panted between every thick slide of his cock. "You love this, you fucking _love_ this."

McCoy nodded stupidly, pathetic noises escaping him with each hot thrust. He hiked his legs farther up Jim's back, trying to hold him closer. Everything was sweat-slick skin, shivering muscle, impossible to grab onto. He reached for his cock instead, stroked in time with Jim's hips, with his breath. Jim gripped bruises into his hips, not tight enough. It was only when Jim bit down, right into the flesh of his chest, that McCoy came, spurting into his hand and pulling Jim in him and onto him.

"Fucking take it," Jim said as he sped up, one elbow braced by McCoy's forehead so he could wind his hand into McCoy's hair. McCoy leaned into the touch, couldn't think of a single word to say. "That's right, just like that."

Jim came hard, thighs straining, staring at McCoy unblinkingly even as the sweat dripped onto his lashes. McCoy wiped it away when Jim relaxed, felt the flutter of Jim's eyelids under his. McCoy waited, Jim a heavy, sweaty mess on top of him, until his breathing had slowed and his heart had stopped galloping against McCoy's. But when he finally tried to move Jim latched on harder. "I'm not letting you go again."

"I'm not going anywhere," he soothed. "But your ass is heavy. Shove over."

Jim slid to the side and wrapping his arm around McCoy's waist. McCoy turned, threw a leg over Jim's, found himself with Jim's hair in his face and breathed deep.

"Jim," he ventured, when he was half sure Jim was asleep.

Jim grunted.

"What will happen when we find the people behind the attacks?" The idea of Spock with them, whoever it was—he couldn't watch that again.

"Don't worry." Jim's smile was crooked with sleep and reassurance. "I'll take care of everything."

For the first time since the crash, McCoy slept peacefully.


	5. Chapter 5

**I've got nowhere else to go.**

He woke on his stomach, covers around his waist, rough fingers wandering up and down his spine.

He'd passed out next to Jim before, in the Academy when they'd dragged each other back to one of their rooms, too drunk to suss out the couch, or after missions when they'd toasted victory and the dead, fallen asleep on top of each other just to prove that they were there. McCoy had woken up with his cock thick and demanding every time, pretended that Jim wasn't the same, tried to feel grateful when Jim ignored it. It was, although McCoy had never told a soul, one of the first things that had convinced McCoy that he'd be a good captain, this understanding of when he could needle and when a joke wouldn't help at all. Mornings had always been for that fraught silence no one ever expected from Jim, a scramble for coffee and a piss. 

If he was lucky, Jim ruffled his hair when he left.

Jim's hand on McCoy's back tickled, had him groaning and pressing his cock down into the mattress. Snuffling into the pillows, he pressed back into Jim's touch, happy to indulge. But Jim's hand on him stilled, a warm weight on his coccyx. "You snore."

"You drool."

He got a bite to the shoulder for that, Jim's weight shifting over him as he pressed his nose against McCoy's neck. McCoy waited for a nuzzle or another nip but Jim just breathed him in until his breath went ragged. "I'm going to fuck you again."

McCoy's cock jumped, pleasure spiking in him at the thought of Jim on him and in him again, a lazy morning fuck before they rolled out of bed. But shifting his hips reminded him that he'd been fucked anything but lazily last night, a low humming ache up his ass that he wanted to savor, not aggravate. He stretched. "Shower first, and I'll blow you if you're lucky."

"I'll make time for both."

"Greedy little shit." But McCoy smiled, turning his head so Jim could see it. 

Jim's fingers were at his lips almost immediately, tracing them, sliding in. He shifted when McCoy sucked, knees between McCoy's thighs and spreading. McCoy felt his cock rub against his cheeks, slip into the cleft teasingly. McCoy warred between lifting his hips up and trying to roll over, still aching from the previous night. But Jim's free hand was on his shoulder blades, all his weight pressing him down and he leaned in and said low, "I've got you, now. Open up."

Craning his head showed that Jim wasn't even smiling, ready to pass it off as a joke if McCoy refused, and some damn fool contrary part in him wanted to say no just for that. But the rest of him had fled to his cock, made him spread his legs as Jim slicked himself up, made him hold himself open even as Jim pressed right into the burn in his ass, all his aches remembering the contours of Jim's cock. He hissed, braced himself on one hand, the other struck between jerking himself off and pressing Jim in closer. It was too little prep and everything rubbed raw, Jim surprisingly heavy on top of him, his breath loud and sour.

He'd wanted this for years.

Jim rocked in slow at first, tantalizingly thorough, fucked in hard enough to make McCoy curse at the press of his balls against his hole, the burning stretch of his insides. His prostate still felt hot and swollen, sent pleasure jittering through him every other thrust, and he groped his cock unhurriedly, letting it build.

"Don't come," Jim demanded when he started getting close. He pulled McCoy's hand away, pushing his upper body down with his chest and entwining his fingers in McCoy's as he pinned them to the bed. McCoy shut his eyes, let his whole world narrow to Jim's cock in his ass, pushing back with each thrust and angling desperately so it hit him best. Jim's nose was in his hair, stubble harsh on the back of his neck, wet tongue and sharp teeth. McCoy tried to pull away from his hands, wanted to jerk himself off so bad it hurt, but Jim tightened his grip hard enough to make his joints pop. "Don't you _dare_."

"Jim—"

"Let me do this." He'd never been able to resist an order from Jim. McCoy breathed deep, spread his legs wider, felt things unknot inside him as the ache and burn spread.

"Fuck."

"That's it." It was as overwhelming as the night before, Jim everywhere he'd always shied away from, hot and hard and indomitable. McCoy had never been a small man, but he felt dwarfed now, consumed. He shuddered when Jim pulled out, disoriented.

"Come on." Jim lead him into the bathroom, got the shower going and pulled him inside. The water sprayed down like a slap to the face, and he jumped, as if he'd been dreaming when he thought he'd awoken. But Jim was still there, naked and grinning and leaning close, stumbling into the wall when McCoy pushed him, the tile behind him making his nipples pebble. McCoy melded against him, wrapping his hand around their dicks together. Jim bit his ear as McCoy tugged, thrust shallowly against his cock.

"I used to pray you'd get some embarrassing sex injury back in the academy," McCoy admitted under the murmur of the water and Jim's breath, timing his strokes with his words. "Just so I'd get to touch you."

Jim laughed, wrapped his hand over McCoy's and picked up the pace. "Did I?"

It took a long jarring moment to remember that this Jim might not know. "No."

There'd been only furtive glances in the locker, endless speculation when Jim wandered around in his boxers or a towel, the few times he'd walked in on him with someone else or woke up with him pressed close and platonic. McCoy had operated on him several times once the mission had started, but he'd only been a body then, too painful to contemplate as anything else. All Starfleet doctors learned to triage, and emotional compartmentalization had followed in its footsteps. It had only reared up rarely, when he'd seen the men and women who'd gotten what he wanted, the only time he'd ever felt the blinding need to hurt someone.

No need for that now, with Jim pulling them around, pushing McCoy onto the warm spot on the tiles where he'd stood and batting his hand away so he could jerk him off.

"Tell me more," Jim demanded, fingers twisting around McCoy's cock.

McCoy closed his eyes, hands over Jim's shoulders and head leaned back against the wall. "You were always telling me—shit—about the people you'd fucked, never shut up when I told you. Let me walk in on you three goddamn times before I punched—you."

He hadn't known he was going to do it until his knuckles were sore and the Andorian in Jim's bed was swearing. He remembered with perfect clarity the white of Jim's eyes as he'd thrown McCoy from the room; he'd forced himself to memorize them, the only thing that had stopped him from beating the Andorian to a pulp. McCoy never knew what Jim had done to stop the Andorian from filing charges.

"You used to eat pie on shore leave," Jim said, shaking him from his addled reminiscence, the husk of his voice drawing him back to the heat in his dick. "Didn't matter where, you'd find some. You used to trace the crumbs on the plate, suck them off with your fucking eyes closed."

"Do you have any idea—" He gasped as the pace grew punishing, everything starting to centralize and spiral out, "How often I sucked my fingers and wished it was your cock, you stupid—oh, fuck—"

He came hard into Jim's hand, face against his neck. Jim worked him through it mercilessly and barely waited for McCoy's last weak spurt before he was pushing McCoy to his knees.

Jim's cock was hot and perfect as the rest of him, wet and clean from the shower, filling his mouth thickly. He swallowed as much of it as he could, memorizing its weight on his tongue. One hand came to rest on the lean muscle above Jim's hip, the other wrapped around Jim's cock, jerking and stroking and holding. Jim's hands settled on the back of his head, not hard enough to hurt but tight in his hair. He thrust shallowly, muscle rippling under McCoy's hand. McCoy moaned, struck between the helpless need for _more_ and the desire to tell Jim that this was exactly what he'd wanted, what he'd fucked himself stupid dreaming about every lonely night on that other ship.

"Put your hands behind your back," Jim demanded, low and heated. McCoy obeyed, his spent cock twitching at the thought of being so utterly in Jim's hands. He closed his eyes and relaxed his throat as Jim started to thrust. It had been too long since he'd sucked cock to take it comfortably, but he wanted it, wanted to give Jim this.

"You were always so fucking smug." Jim's voice was hot and velvet as the slide of his cock. "Must have fucked everyone on this goddamn ship." He gave one long thorough thrust, held McCoy's head steady as he filled his throat insistently. "You like that?"

 _Yes_ , McCoy thought desperately, closing his eyes tighter against his body's choked need for air, the thought that he'd done this with anyone but Jim when Jim had wanted it with him. He wanted to tell him that he'd never done anything like that, couldn't pull away from Jim's dick.

"Such a fucking tease," Jim continued, hand tight in McCoy's hair, thrusts insistent. "I always knew you fucking wanted it, _needed_ it like this—fuck, look at you, McCoy, you're fucking dying for it."

Air came to him in weak gasps as Jim reamed out his throat, utterly overwhelming, Jim's fingers in his hair and his cock in his mouth and his skin under his hands and his smell everywhere. He choked when Jim came, coughed down his come and kept coughing when Jim finally pulled away.

"You," McCoy said between coughs, "Are an asshole."

"Let me make it up to you," Jim said, sounding not sorry at all. McCoy scowled but grudgingly let himself be led back to the bed, where Jim sprawled on top of him and kissed him, licking at the traces of come in McCoy's mouth.

"Now." Jim smiled, settling between McCoy's legs, running his hands down to the tops of his thighs. "Where was I?"

"Reminding me why I put up with you," McCoy said, thumbing Jim's lips. "For the record, I would find a blowjob an extremely convincing argument."

"You are way too coherent," Jim muttered, almost to himself, climbing up McCoy's body. McCoy was on the verge of grabbing his head and pushing him back down when he pushed in.

McCoy cursed, writhing on Jim's cock, only belatedly aware of the hand stroking his hair, the other iron on his hip. "Come on, now, McCoy, you can take it, I know you can."

"Call me _Bones_ ," McCoy demanded sourly. 

"That's what he called you?" Jim asked softly, between each breath-stealing jab.

"Yeah," McCoy hoarsed. He wrapped his legs around Jim's hips, ran his hands down the backs of Jim's thighs to feel every bunch of his muscles. The cock in him was riveting, agonizing and perfect all at once.

"I'm not him," Jim reminded him, picking up the pace. "He couldn't give this to you, could he?"

A harsh, desperate groan slipped out before McCoy could stop it.

"That's it," Jim encouraged, leaning down to kiss McCoy, a mess of lips and teeth. "Give it up to me, come on. I know you love it. He's never going to have you like this."

He loved it even like this, McCoy realized with heady shock. Even raw and a little unkind he loved it, loved Jim, wanted him closer and faster and coming in him. He gripped tighter, barely giving Jim room to thrust but it didn't matter. He needed it, needed it more than he needed to walk the next day or some stupid nickname or breath in his lungs. Jim was consuming him, and he wanted it. He could feel the orgasm twisting in his balls, cording through his veins. 

The door buzzed. 

"Captain," Spock's familiar voice intoned, "I have the information you requested."

"Shit," McCoy snarled, just as Jim said, "Enter."

McCoy came hard, just in time to watch the door swing open. He felt frozen even with his orgasm ripping through him, couldn't bear to look away from Spock's harrowingly blank expression. Jim came in him seconds later and he barely felt it, all his senses numbed with shock.

He still felt blank and empty when Jim pulled out and pushed off of him. It was only the slap to his thigh that brought him back, Jim's grinning face snapping back into focus. "Did I wear you out?"

McCoy said nothing.

"You stay with him," Jim ordered Spock as he dressed. 

"The prisoners confessed?"

"Including the whereabouts of the culprit. I sent a team down to apprehend her." Spock wasn't looking at Jim; all of his attention was focused on McCoy. McCoy felt pinned, flayed.

"Her?"

"The officers were working for Marlena Moreau," Spock explained tersely. The name was vaguely familiar to McCoy—a science officer, he was pretty sure.

It obviously meant more to Jim, who froze—quick enough to be imperceptible to anyone who didn't know him, but McCoy had watched Jim when his father was mentioned enough times to notice.

"I see," said Jim, in that harsh monotone McCoy had only ever heard on the bridge, in negotiations with hostile forces.

But when he finally turned to McCoy, it was with a smile on his face. "I'll comm you in a bit."

He turned to Spock. "You kids have fun."

He left. The door whirred behind him, and McCoy was left with Spock, a living statue.

"I'm sorry," McCoy said into the humiliating silence.

"Do not apologize."

"I can't help it." He kept his back straight so he wouldn't cringe, unable to finish the thought: _loving him._ He still did, even now, when Jim was alien and hurtful.

Spock's eyes were devastating. "Neither can I."

McCoy laughed, the sound painful in his fucked throat. "What a pair we make, huh?"

Spock arched a brow silently. He was, McCoy realized with less discomfort than he should have, a very beautiful man.

Suddenly tired, McCoy ran a hand through his hair. "I need another shower."

He took a sonic this time, the silent ripples against his skin stark after the first with Jim. Spock was just as severe when he'd dressed and returned, out of place next to the sex messy bed.

McCoy cleared his throat scrambling for something to say. "Vulcan tea, right?"

Spock nodded.

This was a little familiar, at least, coordinating the synthesizer for tea for Spock and coffee for himself. He'd been relegated to waiter a few times, when Jim and Spock were so caught up in their game that it looked like they'd been glued to their chairs. Jim's petty cruelty and the messy bed were all wrong, but as they moved to the ready room McCoy felt a little calmer. Spock still gave his awkward little nod of thanks as he took the steaming mug, still puckered up as if for a kiss when he blew on the tea to cool it. It was one of his most human habits, and never failed to make McCoy smile inside.

"This amuses you?" Spock asked, as if guessing his thoughts.

McCoy shrugged as they sat down at the table, facing each other.

"It is reassuring to see some things remain the same in any universe."

"Amen to that," McCoy agreed, and then laughed outright at Spock's puzzled expression.

The silence that followed was slightly less fraught.

"I never thanked you, by the way," McCoy said finally, forcing himself to look Spock in the eye. He still shivered at the memory of what Spock had done, at the utter cool with which Spock had done it, but that didn't change the facts. "You saved my life, back there."

Spock was silent long enough that McCoy started to get irritated, wondering if Spock was going to pull his usual Vulcan bullshit and pretend he didn't know how to take a "thank you." But Spock said only, "You are welcome."

"Who's Marlena?" McCoy asked, when Spock had sipped his tea for some time.

Spock did not look up from his mug. "A woman the Captain was closely associated with."

"What's that got to do with me?"

"A great deal." Spock's jaw was clenched with tension.

"Like what?" McCoy prompted when Spock didn't elaborate.

Spock said nothing. 

McCoy had never felt so frustrated—not when he'd divorced his wife, not when he'd watched Jim fuck his way across the universe, not when he'd waded through every day with the impossible knowledge that he couldn't fix anyone anymore. He wanted to hurt Spock, to shove him out of the shell everyone had been in since McCoy had woken up in this dream of a place. 

Instead he hissed, "She killed me, Spock."

Spock looked up. "I'm aware, Dr. McCoy. It was I who found your body."

McCoy gritted his teeth against the pain he saw; he needed to know. Spock was the only one on this ship who would tell him anything, was the only one who explained things like he knew who McCoy wasn't. "Please."

Spock shook his head minutely. "Do not ask these things of me, Leonard."

McCoy had never heard his first name from Spock, and yet he said it with the familiarity of years.

"Fine," McCoy sighed, finally starting in on his coffee. "You cryptic, green-blooded asshole."

Spock seemed mollified by this, of all things. "I am certain the Captain will explain, if you ask him."

"I won't hold my breath."McCoy stared down into his cup and wondered about this woman he barely remembered, and thought for the first time about the man she had killed. He knew nothing about his other self, had always assumed that he would be who he was anywhere. He thought about the murder, and the way Spock had torn those men apart, about Uhura's and Chapel's smiles and Chekov's knives and agonizers. No one had explained them, in the end. McCoy crawled under people's skins for a living; he'd never put much stock in the surface of things. He'd known from the start that Jim was trouble, and a captain and a friend for all that. The chiseled expressions of the Vulcan refugees after the Battle of Vulcan hadn't fooled him for a second. He'd never forgotten that this place was not the place he had been, but it was all window dressing: sashes and knives and a sword through the Earth, but still the same people he'd known and healed and loved.

He looked up and found Spock staring at him: his uniform barely rippled as he breathed, eyes half lidded but never blinking.

"What?"

"The Captain spent a great deal of time with Lieutenant Moreau." Spock folded his hands together in front of him. "He spent forty three point six percent more of his off duty hours with her than he did with Dr. McCoy."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

Spock's expression did not change. "She disappeared from the ship while it was docked at Deep Space 4, two point three years ago."

 

"But why did—"

The comm chimed: "McCoy, I've got something for you. Deck three, room twelve."

McCoy opened his mouth to tell Jim that he could wait until McCoy was good and ready, but then Spock said, in his usual placid voice, “The agony room.”

It took a long moment for the words to sink in. When they did, McCoy took off running.

The first thing he saw in the room was Jim, so reassuringly smug that McCoy called himself a dozen kinds of fool for ever doubting him.

Then he saw the woman.

She was trapped in a booth, surrounded by security officers at parade rest. The stared ahead stone blind while she slammed against the glass walls, angry and muted. 

"What—" McCoy gaped.

"McCoy." Kirk's slap to his back rocked him. "Say hello to former lieutenant Marlena Moreau, _very_ dishonorably discharged."

She wasn't slamming into the walls, McCoy realized—she was just writhing, throwing herself against them with bestial intensity. He was watching _agony_ , he realized with a sickening lurch, and no one else seemed to care.

"She won't be bothering us anymore," Jim said, shaking his shoulder until McCoy turned. His lips twitched as if at a private joke. "Nothing's going to be bothering us anymore."

"Jim, this isn't—you can't—" His first moments on the _Enterprise_ flashed in his mind, his stuttering disbelief at the crimes that had been committed, the people who had killed his crewmates in another life summarily executed here before they even committed their crimes.

He'd taken their excuses then.

"No."

Jim straightened his back, head thrown up in that way that made him seem bigger than he was, monumental. "She killed you."

" _No_." McCoy felt like he was trying to communicate with a faulty translator, everything getting lost as he tried to form the words. He forced himself to keep his eyes on Jim, even as Marlena's spasms tugged at his peripheral vision. "Let her go."

Jim's voice went cool as his eyes. "She tried to kill you again _yesterday_ , if you remember."

"No."

"Stop saying that." Jim bit the words off.

"She doesn't deserve this."

Jim said nothing, didn't move.

"Perhaps Lieutenant Moreau's punishment could be meted out in some other manner," Spock offered as he entered the room and came to stand next to McCoy. McCoy relaxed the tiniest fraction. How often had he stood like this with Spock, facing Jim down before he bulled his way into something stupid? Jim had always calmed down then, knew that if Spock and McCoy could agree that it was a bad idea then it was worth reconsidering.

"Officers." Jim's voice was deadly cold. "Stand down."

Spock took a small, measured step forward. Jim mirrored him.

McCoy dove for the controls.

Jim moved the same time he did, grabbed his wrists and shoved him out of the way before turning to the control panel. McCoy watched in horror as Jim pressed two little buttons, tiny little beeps at the panel. Marlena's screams suddenly drifted through the glass, her eyes rolling as her muscles contorted.

She was dead in seconds.

McCoy watched her slump slowly, the last sad twitches jittering through her limbs as she collapsed, head hanging and hair covering her face.

"Spock." Jim's voice was still cold, foreign—unrecognizable. "Why don't you do me a favor and take McCoy back to my room?"

"I'm certain he can find the way himself, Captain." Spock too had frozen, his skin slowly tinting greener.

Jim's smile was ugly. "Please."

Spock turned on his heel and marched out.

Without him, the room was in tableau. The guards stared on, stone deaf and blind. Marlena finally lay still, a puppet without strings. The thought flickered in McCoy's mind to take her out of the booth, call Chapel and get her down to the morgue, note time of death.

Jim was waiting, coiled like a wire. He wasn't a man McCoy knew.

McCoy left.

Spock was waiting for him outside the room, but he started walking away as soon as the door closed behind McCoy, didn't look back once. McCoy didn't care. It was all he could do to focus on Spock's long, narrow back, the sound of his footsteps. Spock had torn people apart with his bare hands before McCoy’s eyes, and he was still the most familiar man on the ship. He was the only man who seemed to recognize that McCoy was not the same as the man who had been murdered. Spock was the one who reminded McCoy most of the man he had lost.

McCoy didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about anything at all. He counted his steps, one foot in front of the other, down the curved halls of the ship he knew so well and so little at the same time.

Thirty-two steps later, and suddenly the breath was knocked out of him as he was slammed against the wall. 

He opened his mouth to gasp but Spock was kissing him, lips and hands inhumanly hot on his face, thumbs crossed across his throat and tongue insistent. Spock kissed him like he'd kissed him every day for years, like he knew every corner of McCoy's mouth. It was heady and seductive, the intimacy, the thought that _someone_ on this stupid ship knew him.

Spock pulled away abruptly. "I apologize."

"Spock, what—"But Spock was ripping through the halls, knifing through the rest of the crew as they scurried out of his way. McCoy followed stumblingly, the rasp of Spock's beard still burning against his lips and every fearful look from passersby another closed door. "Spock," he demanded when they stopped—in front of McCoy's door, not Jim's. It was Spock who punched in the code to McCoy's door—McCoy had never told it to him—and then turned, hands clasped behind his back, tension roped around his arms. "You have to talk to me."

"If I come inside." Spock's voice was hoarse, shoulders hunched in a way that made him look smaller. "I will not leave."

"I don't give a damn." Spock let himself be guided into the room. McCoy couldn't be still, hands seizing with the need to move, legs pushing him back and forth across the room. Spock moved only in the flick of his eyes following McCoy's pacing. "Just talk."

"What do you want to know?" 

"Why did Moreau want to kill me?" His last hope was coiling through his ribcage, desperate to latch onto anything Spock would say that could suffocate the gnawing certainty that he knew all the answers already.

"Because Dr. McCoy attempted to obliviate her."

McCoy's lungs were constricted in his chest. "Because she had Jim."

"Because Jim loved her."

"But I didn't—Jim said I never, that we never—" It shouldn't have happened, not here, where Jim had wanted him. The anger, the relentless longing that had been the only thing that had made him want to hurt someone, to be his utter antithesis, should never have happened in a world where Jim wanted to do nothing but fuck him. Jim had killed for him, blithely as switching on a light.

"It was my understanding that while Leonard had never acted on the captain's feelings, he had always capitalized on them. Moreau's success with the captain created an obstacle, one he attempted to eliminate."

"Capitalized," McCoy repeated weakly.

"Leonard's talent for manipulating human emotion was unparalleled." Spock tilted his head—considering, wistful. "Lieutenant Moreau was his only mistake."

"He sure as hell paid for it." Not as much as Moreau had.

"More than you know."

All this time asking—demanding, begging—and now the prospect of hearing anything else was nightmarish, some new horror to turn this place into a broken mirror of the ship he loved. "How?"

"Leonard and I began our affiliation after my _pon farr_." Spock's words had no inflection, fell flat and devastating as phaser fire. "After Leonard marooned Lieutenant Moreau on a small moon near Deep Space 4 without the Captain's consent, the captain made the illogical decision to risk the life of his chief medical officer and first officer to satisfy his need for revenge.”

It was the most McCoy had ever heard Spock say with feeling, in any universe.

"He locked us in a room together at the advent of my _pon farr_." Spock's voice dropped to a harsh, human whisper: "I cannot recall the specifics."

Spock continued mercilessly, "I assumed that afterwards Leonard would not wish to associate with me in any way, but I had underestimated his strategic need to assure the Captain that he had not been compromised. He offered me an alliance, and I accepted."

"Why?" McCoy asked, mouth dry.

Spock took hold of him, face so drawn he looked skeletal. "I found Leonard to be..."

The last time McCoy had seen Spock this devastated, his planet had imploded and his mother had died.

Spock pulled him in closer, stroking the tops of his shoulders. He leaned his forehead against McCoy's, close enough that they were breathing the same air. "We were compatible." 

"I'm not that man," McCoy protested. He couldn't force his voice above a raw whisper.

Spock let go of him, straightened. His expression was a mirror of McCoy's. He ran one finger along McCoy's eyebrow, brushed down his face. 

He said simply, "I do not care."


	6. Chapter 6

**All I've got left is my bones.**

McCoy waited for more but Spock had finished. He remained where he was, one hand on McCoy's jaw, suspended.

The whole world was a wreck. Everyone he loved, everyone he even knew was dead or just gone, a whole universe away. The people he knew here weren't the people he'd known. They were ugly and cruel. _He_ had been ugly and cruel, to people he could never imagine hurting, and there was nothing he could do about it.

He thought of where he'd come from, where there wasn't even the shadow of the people he'd remembered, not even a cruel imitation.

Spock caught him when he tried to move away. "Let me stay."

"I—" It was so tempting, the warmth of Spock's hands, the sad, needy loneliness in his eyes that had been McCoy's for so long, years and years he'd waited for something he knew he'd never have. He couldn't stand seeing it in Spock—Spock who'd been his friend since he'd come here, who'd saved his life, who'd been the most like the man McCoy had known when the rest of the _Enterprise_ —when the entire universe—had turned into something else. When Jim had turned into something else.

Jim burst through the door, a knife in his hand.

He stopped up short at the sight of Spock and McCoy. Spock's touch turned into a grip, pulled McCoy close. "Captain."

"Jim."

"Don't you fucking dare call me that." Jim was seething, angrier than McCoy had ever seen him, even more than when he had stared down the man who'd killed his father.

"You need to calm down, you —"

"Shut up."

McCoy froze at the harsh bark of Jim's voice, the raw anger in it.

"Thought I told you to take him to my quarters," Jim said, rounding on Spock.

"If you believe I have been remiss in my duties, you may attempt to discipline me," Spock said, and even before he finished McCoy knew what Jim would do. 

“Jim, no –”

Jim lunged knife-first, aimed right for Spock's stomach. Spock batted it away from him almost casually before launching himself at Jim, throwing his entire weight on him and bearing him down to the floor. They rolled, entangled in one another, the closest friends McCoy had ever seen now closer, scrabbling at each other's weak points.

McCoy went to them, grabbed at Spock's uniform, at his arms, but it was impossible to move him, impossible to change anything. He made a low, guttural noise, shoved at Spock with all his weight, tried to catch Jim's fist as it went flying towards Spock's face.

They both threw him off—Jim pushing him away with the fist McCoy had caught, Spock simply shrugging him off like so much dead weight.

McCoy rolled away hard, sprawled flat on his back and elbowed himself up, boiling with loathing—at the people who'd killed his Jim and Spock, at the universe he'd found himself in, at himself.

"Stop," McCoy begged, but it was low and hoarse. Spock's hands were still wrapped around Jim's throat, immovable and lethal. He shook Jim like a dog with a bone, was going to snap Jim's neck any minute. Jim was writhing, fighting dirtier than McCoy had ever seen: he scratched at Spock's eyes, at his ears, punched at his stomach where Spock's heart would be, kicked up blindly and relentlessly. 

They could each kill each other. They _wanted_ to.

"I said _stop_!"

He didn't realize how loud he'd bellowed until Jim and Spock froze. He watched them let go of each other, threads slowly unraveling. They moved away, panting, straightened their uniforms with glares but not a word. They each took a grudging step backward, eyes on each other, and then, almost in sync, on McCoy.

There was something viscerally satisfying in it, watching them sit, eyes on him. It was an ugly thing, to feel this good at something so petty. McCoy had never taken pleasure in control, even when it saved lives. But Jim and Spock had stopped fighting, had faded back from monsters into people he could recognize, people he had known for years. 

He could be fooled, if he wasn't careful—or if he wanted to be.

McCoy was so very foolish.

"The other you would have wanted her dead," Jim said. He sounded sullen, almost childish.

"I'm _not_ him."

Jim didn't protest, nodded his head abruptly and kept it bowed. "Yeah, I figured that out."

"I can't—" McCoy stopped himself, because he knew better. "I don't want to be him."

Spock spoke up when Jim said nothing, "I am aware, Leonard."

"I don't care," Jim finished.

A bitter laugh escaped him at that, that even when they were trying to kill each other they could still read each other's minds, finish each other's thoughts. "God, what happened here?"

McCoy paced restlessly in front of them, ran his hands through his hair. Jim and Spock had tried to kill each other once, had hated each other with all the force of young men who had nothing more to lose.

Didn't they all know better now.

"Do you wish to return to your universe?" Spock asked, studiously even.

"Is that even possible?"

Jim still hadn't looked up. "It is."

McCoy had not asked once since he was brought to this universe. He leapt on the idea now, leaving this twisted version of everything he knew forever. He could go back, forget it all happened, try to move on. There were people he still knew back home, the few friends he'd left behind. They would be wondering what had happened to him, the sole survivor of the _Enterprise_. They would have found his empty hotel room, maybe even Jim Kirk's fingerprints on the glass.

Spock and Jim were waiting.

Everything about this was wrong -- Jim and Spock at each other’s throats instead of each other’s sides, staring at him like he could fix anything but broken bones. McCoy could see exactly how it was wrong and exactly the way things should have been instead. He looked at men who had the faces of people he knew and knew, down to every laugh line, how they should look instead.

Those men were dead.

He wasn't going back. He'd known it since he'd first seen Jim in his drunken haze, convinced he was seeing things, absolutely insane. He hadn't cared at all then, had been willing to give up his sanity for the chance to see the _Enterprise_ again, the faces of people he knew and loved.

He couldn’t get back the people he’d lost, and he couldn’t give up the people he’d found, but maybe he could do something in between -- something new.

"You two hated each other when you first met, you know," McCoy said gently. "I don't know how it happened here, but back there Spock was at the Academy, and he gave you a test that couldn't be beaten."

Jim finally looked up.

"What happened?" Spock prompted.

"Jim beat it the third time around—cheated his pants off." They had had that one night of blissfully uncomplicated celebration, the ache in McCoy's chest soothed by seeing Jim so happy, his smile so bright. "You weren't too pleased."

"I imagine," Spock agreed hesitantly, sounding puzzled.

“It only got worse from there. Nero attacked; Vulcan was destroyed. You both got emotionally compromised, and wound up throttling each other on the bridge." He hadn't spoken of it in years, hadn't been able to say anything at the time. Now the words flowed easily. "I was sure one of you was going to kill the other."

"Spock and I had a deal," Jim interrupted. "After I killed Pike."

"You didn't kill Pike where I come from." Jim sat up straighter, and Spock's eyebrows jumped up. McCoy had their attention now, and his best chance. "You saved his life, the two of you—and Earth, too." Jim opened his mouth, moved like he was going to say more, but McCoy waved him off. He needed to keep going, to finish it. It was a story he needed to tell, a history—a eulogy. "I don't know what happened but you two were the best Starfleet had ever seen. I could never figure it out, why you two worked so well, not after the way you started. But you did—you completed each other, shared everything each of you had." 

He knew he'd made his point when Jim and Spock glanced at each other in perfect sync.

"We aren't those people," Jim said.

McCoy knew. "I don't care."

"We have never attempted this kind of endeavor before," Spock said slowly. It wasn't a protest so much as a warning.

McCoy shrugged. "Do you still boldly go, here?"

Jim and Spock stared at him blankly.

"Starfleet's motto: to boldly go where no one has gone before." McCoy stepped forward, sat in the space between them, just wide enough for him. Spock's hand went to his back immediately, Jim's to his neck. 

Spock stroked along his back, running comfortingly over the knobs of his spine. "That is reasonable."

Jim petted the side of McCoy’s neck with his thumb, his gaze flicking warily from Spock to McCoy. 

“All right,” Jim agreed hesitantly, and then, with more strength, “Bones.” 

That would have to be enough.


End file.
